Latest / Rusty's Garage / John Smailes | Part 1 - reporting on bank robberies and the London to Sydney

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John Smailes | Part 1 - reporting on bank robberies and the London to Sydney · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
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I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
0:27
I recorded the intros for this episode in Bathurst.
0:30
You may just in the distance at times hear the touring car masters on the track.
0:36
On the way to the mountain in Sydney, I caught up with an old colleague who I've wanted to get on the pod for a while.
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John Smales has done a lot in his life in both motor racing and automotive circles.
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A broadcaster with
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true love of being at the coalface chasing stories.
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He's never lost that new sense, thanks to his background in mainstream media covering everything from crime to politics and working for the big news outlets.
1:04
He is a gold standard, a benchmark for PR and communications, and an author who's now chalked up 10 books.
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If I know him, there's more to come.
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Smilesy, or JS as we call him, did some racing too, but he's probably best known for his work covering the sport.
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Touring cars, Formula One, some of the best bike racers in Australian history, as well as domestic and international rallying.
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Another event that stands out is the famed London to Sydney.
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He followed it through some treacherous places and reported on it at a time well before the internet and AI.
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His CV includes stints at Channel 9, very memorably at the ABC with Will Hagen and a young Neil Crompton, and he was part of the 10 Motorsport era too.
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This convo has some wonderful memories of great drivers and riders, circuits that are now long gone.
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There are funny recollections too, including a run-in with Kimi Räikkönen and being told to F off on live TV.
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You'll be transported to those moments because JS is a great storyteller, which leads me to his latest book, Feminine.
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Full tilt on Colin Bond.
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It is fabulous.
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Bondi drove for both Holden and Ford during a golden period in touring car racing and is one of the most diversely talented drivers that this country has ever produced, who was equally as strong in open wheelers and in rallying.
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I'll put a link for the book if you're interested in the description too.
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Now, if you're like me, you're starting to wonder where John finds all the time for this.
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He also chairs the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame, and that is something that he's incredibly passionate about, ensuring that we preserve and celebrate those who have made a significant mark, and keeping that Hall of Fame, keeping the cachet around it.
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Even now, my friend brings the kind of energy and enthusiasm for life and work together,
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that I wish I had half of.
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It comes through in the conversation too.
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Hope you enjoy it.
3:15
Hello, John Smiles.
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How are you?
3:17
I'm sensational, Greg.
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This is a well overdue chat.
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We're doing it on the week of the great race at Bathurst.
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So we'll talk a little bit about that, but I want to canvas different aspects of your career.
3:30
Can I begin?
3:30
Am I right in saying you grew up maybe in a country town and where did you grow up and what was sort of early life like for you and so on?
3:38
Well, I grew up in a couple of country towns, actually.
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My dad was a General Motors dealer in Inverell, which is seriously country.
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And then later he moved to Camden, which is, of course, these days a suburb of Sydney, but at the time was rural as well.
3:54
And again, he was the general manager of a General Motors dealership, so the background was always automotive.
4:00
Yeah, there is a little connection.
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I don't know how much credit you give it if you like, but or strength you give it.
4:07
But there is a little connection to Maroubra Speedway for you too, is there not?
4:10
My late dad talked about Maroubra Speedway quite fondly.
4:15
So that was the first place he ever went to.
4:17
What's the connection there?
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On third generation automotive, my grandfather, Charlie Woolgar, had a garage under one of the wool stores at Circular Quay in Sydney.
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Crazy.
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Woolgar's garage.
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And you'd walk down this musty old staircase into this old basement area and there were Bugattis and Bentleys there.
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Not that they were very expensive at the time or even well revered, but Charlie used to look after those.
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And by legend...
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he was also a tuner for cars that raced at Maroubra.
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I don't think he ever raced himself.
4:53
Okay.
4:53
But, you know, he passed on the love of good cars to my dad and my dad and Charlie passed them on to me.
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Regrettably, they were both sensational on the tools and I was the failure of the family because any time I touched a spanner, all I did was bark my knuckles, which is why I started writing about it instead of doing it.
5:14
You are, well, that's something we share in common.
5:17
The writing stuff, I gather you were very good at English at school and things, were you?
5:21
I loved it.
5:22
I loved it.
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I was writing copy from the age of kind of eight, you know, doing little news magazines and that sort of thing.
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And by the age of 14, I was writing from a local newspaper, writing motorsport columns for the local newspaper.
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In fact, Leo Gagin, gold star champion, very kindly allowed me to play hooky from school on Wednesdays so I could ghostwrite a column for him for the local press.
5:51
This is John Smale's like 13, 14, how old?
5:54
You bet, yeah, yeah.
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I was having a good time.
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No one told me I couldn't do it.
5:58
So, but you had a hero at this point, David Mackay, didn't you?
6:02
So, I mean, he was a touring car champion, but he's also in this world.
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And you wrote to him at a very young age.
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Is that right?
6:08
Oh, I did.
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I used to hang out on Sunday mornings for the Sunday Telegraph to come over the front fence so I could tear it open and read his behind the wheel column.
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And I wrote to him and just told him I was a fan.
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And he sent me back a glossy photograph of himself autographed.
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And so I became a Mackay acolyte from that point onwards.
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And I was very fortunate that when I joined media as a cadet, well, actually as a copy boy on the Daily Telegraph, Mackay was the motoring rider there.
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And we kind of, you know, he kind of adopted me to a degree.
6:44
Fantastic.
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What did you learn from him?
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I mean, firstly, he's a hero.
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I mean, you clearly enjoyed what he was doing both in a writing sense but also perhaps in a driving sense.
6:53
What skills did he give you to ultimately where you ended up?
6:57
Oh, gee whiz.
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That's a difficult question.
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It's possibly what I learned what not to do.
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To do.
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Yeah, David was quite a controversial operator.
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He was one of the very first commercial people who turned motorsport into a commercial operation in Australia.
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You know, at the time when Donald Kingsley Thompson, who was the original founder of CAMS, was very much for the purity of the sport and keeping commercialism out of it, David was of the opposite view, that commercialism should drive the sport.
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And so his scooter Ivoleche was probably the first, you know, money-earning team in Australia.
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And David, I guess, kind of crossed the line because he was also writing pure journalism in a newspaper, which could be thought to be perhaps a little tainted by his commercial involvement.
7:49
Yeah.
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So to that degree, I learnt where the line was.
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Was, yeah.
7:58
There is a little element, if we're not necessarily doing this in a timeline, JS, but in the passion that you had, the fascination that you had, I mean, talking about the, you know, going and seeing the workshop and so on there before, you wrote to, as a young man, some car companies too, didn't you?
8:14
Tell me about that.
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Was it Porsche you wrote to was one of them?
8:17
Oh, Porsche and Ford, you know.
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It just seemed like a good idea at the time.
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I was begging for merchandise.
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I thought it would look pretty good on the wall.
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You got sent some things.
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They replied, didn't they?
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Ferry Porsche, son of Ferdinand, wrote me a personal letter back and sent me an original Porsche car badge from the bonnet of one of the original Porsches.
8:38
That's awesome.
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Which I've lost, of course.
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Yeah, but you've kept lots of other great things which we'll come to.
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You love it, you can enjoy and are good at writing about it.
8:48
Where does it take you in the first steps of beyond teenage years or early careers?
8:56
I mean, David's obviously – is he the first part of it?
8:58
Is that the first step for you or where do you –
9:01
No, I wanted to be a journalist.
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Mainstream, not necessarily mainstream.
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Yeah, mainstream.
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Motorsport was simply a sidebar.
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That was my interest.
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But my career passion was to be a fully qualified working journalist.
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And I was very fortunate that I was taken on as a copy boy by the Daily Teller at age 16, 17, which led to a cadetship, which led to me doing...
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unusually at a very young age, page one stories.
9:32
I became the armed hold-up king of the Daily Telegraph.
9:35
Did you really?
9:37
I was on the day shift on the Daily Telegraph where most armed hold-ups occurred at banks and for a while there was a spate of them.
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And it was almost formulaic.
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I would go out, I would have a photographer, we would take photographs of the scene, we would do diagrams, I would interview people.
9:53
And I was getting bylines at kind of 18 years of age on page one of the Daily Telegraph.
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Incredible.
9:59
Yeah, which was amazing.
10:01
We're talking, you know, not that we want to bring up age, J.S., but well before AI, well before computers, so we're talking typewriters.
10:09
I've watched you and Billy Woods and a few others in action when you had this ability to churn stuff quickly, mate.
10:15
Did it come easily to you?
10:17
Was it something that just sort of flowed?
10:19
What was that like?
10:19
Oh, yeah, yeah.
10:20
I mean, you know, in the day you had a whole group of women on TV
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typewriters, called copy takers.
10:28
And you would phone copy in from afar, on a payphone usually.
10:32
Yes.
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And you had to do it swiftly and you had to do it with a degree of accuracy.
10:42
And after a while it was just...
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second nature that you would just do, you know, stop, break, new paragraph, 24 words per paragraph, active voice, and away you went.
10:51
You know, 10 powers later, you tell the story.
10:54
Tell it so that the story, the lead told the story, and then in descending order of importance after that.
10:59
You've never lost that newshound way about you either, have you?
11:02
I mean, I think, you know, even perhaps in the way you've shaped some books that you've done in later life, that, you know, the notion of...
11:12
what do people want to know at the top line of the stories is a real trademark of yours in some ways, isn't it?
11:19
They say if it bleeds, it leads.
11:21
Yeah.
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And that's pretty much what it's all about.
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You've got to capture people's attention with the first paragraph or first chapter and then work it from there.
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The trick is not to make it boring in the middle bit, but to always start with your best opening lines.
11:38
Okay.
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Bank robberies.
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Were there any other, before we get back to motor racing and automotive, was there any other big yarns in that space?
11:44
Oh, look, I was delighted to be used across the board.
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I was, for a while, a police roundsman, then a court reporter, then a political reporter on New South Wales State Parliament.
11:57
Actually did a bit of federal work as well.
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So it was a great learning curve.
12:01
That's what the Telegraph was all about at the time.
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It took its young blokes.
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and really gave them a grounding in journalism.
12:08
The only thing I wouldn't do is sub-edit, because once you got stuck on the subs desk, you were there forever.
12:13
So if anyone ever said, on your CV, can you sub?
12:16
The answer was always no.
12:18
Because that coalface stuff for you gives you, even now, a real buzz, doesn't it?
12:22
Oh, yeah.
12:23
Yeah.
12:23
You just love getting out there and – like you.
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You just love getting out there and asking the questions.
12:27
That can be when you're in the scrum of some of those things.
12:29
I haven't done much in the way of political reporting, but I can vividly recall going once to –
12:34
for 2GB to see the premier about something.
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We were in the scrum and someone either accidentally or even deliberately yanked the mic cable out of the recorder.
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And I absolutely shat myself, JS, because I thought I was going to go back to GB without the grabs from the premier.
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And I went to the PR person, I explained what went on and they gave me one-on-one time with the premier.
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I was super lucky.
13:00
I would have been bloody fired.
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Let's come back here.
13:04
There is a little thing around Sydney Royale.
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I may be jumping too far ahead here, but we can bounce around.
13:10
Sydney Royale, a little bit of Speedway, and you were covering it for AAP and the Daily Telly too.
13:15
Is this right?
13:15
Well, I was employed by the Daily Telegraph and on Saturday nights I managed to get myself the gig as being the reporter for the Sydney Royale, which in the day was covered by the Telegraph on Sunday and there were three editions of the Sunday Telegraph, so I had to update for each edition as the night wore on.
13:32
But I worked out that Australian Associated Press, which was the wire service, also needed a reporter, so I managed to double dip.
13:40
Fantastic.
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And phone in, firstly to the Sunday Telegraph and then secondly to AAP.
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And I earn double the money for the same story, basically.
13:52
Terrific.
13:52
People probably, in a generational sense, may not realise how big it was back then.
13:59
I mean, Phil Christensen, godfather of Supercross and things like that, did a similar sort of thing, a similar line of work.
14:05
And he talks about it.
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covering back pages or significant pages in the sports section and so on.
14:12
Oh, yeah.
14:13
It was a big, big deal.
14:14
And it was made more so by the brothers Raymond, Mike and Steve.
14:18
Steve, yeah.
14:19
Yeah.
14:19
And they would stand in the middle and they would do this incredible doubles act on one microphone and they would walk around in circles tying themselves up in a mic lead.
14:29
And I would walk around with them listening to what they were saying because they were writing my copy for me.
14:33
Yeah.
14:35
I mean, Mike's very sadly gone now.
14:39
Steve was great to me in a period where I was doing some news reading for radio.
14:44
One night I got out of a 10 p.m. bulletin and the phone rang.
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And I thought, God, what have I mucked up here?
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This is someone complaining.
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And it was him to say, hey, mate, you're getting there.
14:53
Keep at it kind of thing.
14:54
And it was just a really nice little moment that I've cherished along the way.
14:58
Is there an early interview for you in your career here?
15:02
I mean, they talk about...
15:04
aspiring to talk to the greats one day, but very early on, I think, is there an interview with Sir Jack somewhere that was, you know, in the first stages in some respects of your career?
15:15
Well, Jack Brabham was the first person I ever met in motorsport.
15:19
Crazy.
15:20
At 12 years of age.
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Jack had come back to Australia, having just won his second world championship in 1960, and the ARDC threw on a special meeting for him at the October meeting at Bathurst, and
15:34
The Bathurst 100 had occurred at Easter time, but they got Craven Mile, I want to say, one of the cigarette companies, to stage another race, which was basically the Jack Brabham tribute race in October.
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And my dad took me to Bathurst at 12 years of age, my first ever motor race.
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And dad being dad, walked up to Jack and said, Hi, Jack, how are you going?
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Well done.
15:57
And I'm standing beside him.
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Jack, I'd like you to meet my son, John.
16:00
So the first motor racing driver I ever met was Jack Bravham.
16:04
How good.
16:05
And that kind of changed my life.
16:07
Well, you would work with him in later life in a commentary sense, which we'll come to.
16:11
And he went on to do some, I mean, you know, three world championships and the final one with that, you know, in the car bearing his name.
16:19
Can I come to London to Sydney?
16:21
Yeah.
16:22
because you've written a number of books.
16:25
I mean, we're into double figures there in terms of the amount of books that you've done in your life.
16:30
London to Sydney in the late 60s must have been a huge thing for you, was it, mate?
16:35
What was that experience like?
16:37
Take me there, how you covered it, what you did and so on.
16:39
That was life-changing.
16:40
Was it?
16:41
Yeah.
16:42
The Daily Telegraph was one of the two sponsors.
16:43
The London Daily Express was the instigator of the marathon.
16:49
David Mackay persuaded Sir Frank Packer, the owner of the Daily Telegraph, that he should also become a co-sponsor from the Sydney end.
16:57
And...
16:59
For whatever reason, out of a newsroom of very, very ambitious people, I was chosen to be the guy who travelled from London to Sydney covering the event the entire way.
17:14
And that caused some controversy within the paper because, of course, I was quite young and there were people much more senior.
17:21
How did this whippersnapper get the gig?
17:23
But keep in mind, 1968, Rusty, a trip was a trip.
17:27
These days people hop on planes every day.
17:30
But in those days, to be told you're going to London was one thing.
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To be told that you were going to be working on Fleet Street for a couple of weeks was another thing.
17:38
And then to be told that you were going to travel across three continents back to Australia covering this amazing event was just extraordinary.
17:46
And I got the gig.
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So good.
17:49
So that changed my life in so many ways.
17:53
The book that you wrote on it, which I think is one of the first books you did, has become a bit of a collector's edition too, hasn't it?
18:00
Called The Bright Eyes of Danger, David Mackay and I wrote it, partially on the SS Chew San, transiting from Bombay to Fremantle, halfway through the marathon.
18:12
So David was very keen to get...
18:14
get it up and sold and make us both a fortune.
18:18
And it was called The Bright Eyes of Danger from a poem which guided David's life.
18:26
Can I quote?
18:27
Of course you can.
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The untented cosmos, my abode, I pass a willful stranger, my mistress still the open road and the bright eyes of danger.
18:39
I love that.
18:40
I love that.
18:41
And I love the fact that it's etched in your memory.
18:43
Just quickly, take people to a couple of places.
18:46
I mean, here's a young man getting the opportunity of a lifetime.
18:51
um going to places i would have met i mean aside of of uh destinations like london and whatever else what about some of the remote aspects that you did along the way well let's let's say uh the ladder band pass which leads to the kiver pass of all places and bandits uh everywhere and i rode i drove in in a taxi for goodness sake because we were getting around as best we could yeah and
19:16
And I drove in in a taxi in the pre-dawn to get to the end of the special stage, which would determine effectively the outcome of the Asian end of the marathon with two armed guards on the bonnet to ward off bandits in the pre-dawn.
19:33
And we got to the other end.
19:34
And then here we are with the dawn breaking and you look up into the craggy cliffs above
19:42
and there are Kurds and tribesmen sitting there, all of them armed, just sitting silently looking down on you as the cars come clattering through on this huge shale surface, throwing rocks everywhere.
19:58
And to me, that just sits in the mind as what the marathon was all about.
20:04
A photograph I took, I took.
20:07
of the Holden Manaro, as Davis Holden Manaro coming through, was on the front page of the book, was on the cover of the book.
20:15
And it's just an absorbing memory of what occurred.
20:20
The event itself, and then even closer to home here, things like Round Australia and so on, they captivated people's attention, just the gruelling nature of it, the distance, the tyranny of all the challenges you've just described, for example, in some of the countryside and places you went to.
20:36
People think these days that motor racing, circuit racing, is the epitome.
20:41
Back in the 50s and 60s, it was rally that really was the proof of purpose of motor cars.
20:50
It was what the car companies really, really wanted to promote.
20:54
So the Red X trial of 1953, which opened the outback of Australia, there were no ropes.
21:01
That's why Jellignite Jack Murray carried Jellignite to open the ropes.
21:06
As it turns out, he also blew up country dunnies.
21:12
But he was... That sort of event really captured the imagination of the public and, in fact, sold motorcars.
21:24
You've kept records along the way, which I think has helped you in a book sense.
21:28
And I mean, can I bounce around a couple of interviews here that you've kept?
21:33
I mean, Frank Gardner is gone now, obviously.
21:36
There's a story around...
21:38
Him going wheel to wheel with Jimmy Clark and having a bit of a moment of realisation that if he was to be one of the greats or to be a world champion in Formula One, maybe he needed just a fraction more in that space relative to Jimmy Clark.
21:55
Have I got that story right?
21:56
Yeah, that's right.
21:57
I spent a bit of time with Frank when he returned to Australia.
22:00
In fact, he taught me how to drive.
22:02
Did he?
22:03
I didn't set out to learn to drive from Frank Cunha.
22:05
I already had a driver's licence.
22:06
Yeah.
22:07
But, you know, any time you drove with Frank, beads of sweat would appear on your brow because you knew you were being assessed every moment of the drive by a bloke who reckoned that 75% of the driving occurred with the feet, not with the steering wheel.
22:23
Wow.
22:24
And he would mark you down and give you gruff commentary on what you could do.
22:30
So, you know, I got to know Frank pretty well.
22:31
And, yes, he knew from a fairly early day in Formula 3
22:37
that he was maybe a tenth or maybe even a hundredth of a second.
22:42
Not much, but it was just that little bit.
22:43
Just enough of it.
22:44
And he was enough of a realist and a pragmatist to understand where his limitations ultimately lay, or rather where blokes like Clark's ability lay above his.
22:57
And that...
22:58
coloured Frank's judgment on what he could do.
23:00
It didn't mean that he didn't have amazing self-belief and it didn't mean when he returned to Australia that he couldn't build the world's best sports sedans and run the world's best BMW team.
23:11
Frank believed very strongly in himself but he also knew where his limitations lay.
23:16
Yeah, amazing.
23:16
I mean, not to say at all when we're retelling that story that he wasn't talented at all but I love the fact that he...
23:23
He could process that and say, you know, maybe, you know, in this domain, maybe I'm better off somewhere else, so to speak.
23:29
But keep in mind, this was in the days before telemetry.
23:32
This was a guy... Human telemetry.
23:34
Working out from the seat of his pants what his abilities were and what his limitations were.
23:41
We have quite a few listeners to the pod that are across the ditch in New Zealand, obviously.
23:45
You've sat with Chris Amon, for example, at Manfield Circuit Chris Amon, as it's now known.
23:52
He was highly rated by Enzo Ferrari, was he not?
23:57
Enzo Ferrari regarded him as being the best in the world, but also the unluckiest in the world.
24:02
And when Chris made the determination that he would retire, Enzo wrote him a note saying, you're making a huge mistake.
24:15
One day your family will retire.
24:19
know that, what was the word, that you were, that you could have been the greatest and you blew the opportunity.
24:32
He wrote it in a kind way.
24:33
Yes.
24:34
But still he disappointed, Chris disappointed me.
24:38
Ferrari.
24:39
But then again, what Ferrari did to Chris was almost unconscionable.
24:43
Was it?
24:43
Oh, yeah.
24:44
In terms of, you know, elevating him at a very young age to a position where it was really a no-win situation.
24:53
I mean, the story of Chris starting in the Monaco Grand Prix in 19, I want to say, 60...
25:02
Am I right?
25:03
Yeah, you could be right.
25:04
I'd like to.
25:06
When Bandini was incinerated.
25:09
And Chris, in that moment, was elevated to being the number one Ferrari driver in the team.
25:18
Possibly a year before he could have...
25:22
I get the got gotten there.
25:23
Yeah, by by neck by natural ability.
25:26
Yeah, so so Enzo kind of used him up Thrust him in a you know, if you remember the wonderful Enzo line from that which which is a horrible line when Enzo was phoned back at the Maranilla and told that Bandini had been killed and his first reaction was and the machine how is the car?
25:47
power out
25:48
In writing some of the, I mean, one of the Formula One books that you've done celebrates Aussies and Kiwis that have made it at different levels into Formula One and not just drivers for that matter either.
26:00
But you learnt a story that really, I wouldn't say captivated you, but maybe surprised you because you know so much about motor racing generally.
26:12
And that was around Joan Richmond, wasn't it?
26:14
Oh, I'm a mad keen fan of, Joanie.
26:18
If I'd been born in a different era...
26:22
Your wife, Jean, is here, so let's behave.
26:25
Yeah.
26:26
Joan shattered the glass ceiling.
26:29
She was fifth in the 1931 Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island.
26:35
She then drove overland to England...
26:38
in a Singer 9 at a time... Singer 9?
26:42
Singer.
26:45
Which was only three years after the very first drive in the opposite direction had occurred by Francis Bertels.
26:53
Joan then competed in several Monte Carlo rallies
26:58
And then she and Elsie, Elsie, I wanted to say Gad, but I'm wrong, won the Brooklands 1000 against the best drivers in the world on handicap, but they nonetheless still won.
27:16
And then she went on to become the liaison between the British Racing Drivers Club and the Silver Arrows team, which was Adolf Hitler's PR team when they came and raced at Donington.
27:28
And she was the only person who could come to terms with Alfred Neubayer and make all of this thing happen.
27:35
Wow.
27:35
And when she returned to Australia after the war, no one recognised her.
27:41
She entered the Bathurst post-war event in 1946 but didn't turn up because no-one was really interested and she went on for the second half of her life, almost 50 years, as a recluse in Malvern in Victoria, which was...
27:59
Now is such a pity.
28:00
And I'm so pleased that through the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame, we've actually inducted her in the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame and she's recognised by the National Museum in Canberra and many of her trophies are on display in the National Museum.
28:17
It's a great accolade.
28:29
John first worked with Neil Crompton in the early part of Crompo's broadcast career.
28:34
The Hall of Famer is part of the fabric of the sport and had some quiet conversations with Tony Cochran that helped kickstart supercars as we know it today.
28:42
It should have been anodised, I don't know, I'm grappling here, whether they should have been anodised pink or green or blue, who cares, who gives us stuff, it's got nothing to do with anything or some other obscure thing that only the industry cares about, you know, it's sort of
28:55
It can't always be for mechanics and engineers, particularly if it ignores the customer along the way.
29:01
So it was a lot of that kind of, I'm trying to choose my words carefully, navel-gazing.
29:08
And I said this to Tony, you know, and he was involved in much bigger, broader entertainment.
29:14
projects in those days that you know we needed someone like him who saw it for its show business value and then let the engineers the drivers and the mechanics and everybody ply their trade after it but first and foremost get the show right you can search for the neil crompton and tony cochran episodes in the rusty's garage library back to js as rusty calls him now
29:38
We've mentioned, I think, the likes of Oran Park or Amaroo, perhaps even already tracks that are gone.
29:43
What about a memory of Warwick Farm for people?
29:47
And you have one that is in, it's basically its inception or its opening, don't you?
29:52
Well, you spoke earlier of me writing to people.
29:55
I wrote to Geoffrey P. Sykes, who was brought out from England, from the Aintree Circuit, to form Warwick Farm around the horse racing track, which was owned by the Australian Jockey Club.
30:10
And Geoff took my letter quite seriously and turned up at my home to...
30:16
to interview me on his way to drive to Melbourne for a race meeting.
30:21
And he became, I wouldn't say a friend, but certainly a nodding acquaintance of my parents, which led me to becoming, as a young teenager, the very first assistant to the secretary of the meeting at Warwick Farm
30:38
which meant that I was effectively a gopher, Geoff would sit in his office.
30:42
He would never go out and talk to people.
30:44
They would come to him because that was the British way.
30:47
And he would say, John, would you go and get Jim Clark for me, please?
30:50
And I would walk up to Jim Clark and say, excuse me, Mr Clark, Mr Sykes wonders if it would be possible if you could join him in his meeting, in his office for a meeting in maybe ten minutes, if that's suitable to you.
31:02
LAUGHTER
31:03
And so that was my introduction to, you know, motorsport at that level.
31:08
The other two guys who went on to become assistants to the secretary were Peter Collins, who became managing director of Lotus Formula 1, and Peter Windsor, who, of course, is a legend in Formula 1 commentary.
31:21
Who we worked with at Network 10 and so on.
31:25
So, I mean, just a recollection of the track proper.
31:27
I mean, it's a horse racing facility out there now, but, I mean, it was –
31:31
from a touring car and even some of the things that you've just talked about.
31:34
It was a pretty special place, wasn't it?
31:36
Well, it was sensational.
31:37
The Australian Jockey Club decided, because they were the premier horse racing facility in Australia with Royal Randwick, and they also had this subsidiary race track at Warwick Farm.
31:50
And a guy called Sam Horton of Horton...
31:55
Retail stores.
31:56
Determined that they could build basically what Aintree had in Great Britain, which was a similar thing.
32:02
And they hired Jeff Sykes, who was a deputy clerk of the course at Aintree, to come out and put it all together.
32:07
And Jeff actually drew the circuit on a napkin at a restaurant one night.
32:13
And it became pretty much that circuit.
32:17
Tragically, Sam Horton, who backed this against major opposition from many of the stalwarts of the AJC, was killed before the opening meeting driving out in a taxi out of the gates of Warwick Farm, and he was taken out by a private car.
32:35
So Sam Horton never lived to see the fruits of his labour.
32:38
And, of course, without him, the guys who opposed it
32:43
continued to hack away.
32:44
So Jeff was always fighting a rearguard action, no matter the fact that he had the world's best, well, a world-class circuit in Australia attracting world-class drivers.
32:55
Within 13 years, Warwick Farm was dead.
32:58
Crazy.
32:59
Can we come to Surfers Paradise?
33:03
Well, firstly, did they, back in the day, did a lot of them used to hang at a hotel?
33:08
Was it the Pink Boodle or something or other?
33:09
What was that home?
33:10
Oh, rusty, rusty, rusty.
33:14
I don't know the name of it.
33:15
Is that true?
33:15
Is that what the name is?
33:16
It was the pig poodle hotel where the races roost.
33:21
And it had coin-operated vibrating beds.
33:27
Peter Malloy used to take a heap of 20-cent pieces with him so that he could keep Wayne Gardner under control by having him permanently vibrated.
33:39
That's terrific.
33:41
I'm picturing some...
33:43
Anyway.
33:45
But there was a race meeting in the 1976 last round of the Tasman Series which was rained out and the circuit was covered.
33:53
So there was the infamous party at the Pink Poodle, the pool party at the Pink Poodle, where... How do I put this politely?
34:03
Clothes were optional.
34:04
LAUGHTER
34:06
Max Stewart has seen a Mr Whippy van driving by and thought that it needed to be in closer proximity to the pool and was that close, that close to driving it into the deep end when Vern Shupin shoved him aside and put on the brakes.
34:28
Oh, great old days, great old days.
34:30
We haven't even talked about the service as a venue.
34:34
As I've come to see you here today, I've been in recent days and worked at the Singapore Grand Prix and in wandering the paddock,
34:43
I had this beautiful moment, JS, where I spoke with Sir Jackie Stewart and Martin Brundle, and we didn't talk a thing about the Singapore meeting.
34:55
We started recollecting different things, and Sir Jackie brought up Longford
35:00
And the Longford Pub and that he's since been to the Longford Pub and signed, you know, a photo in there.
35:07
And that really made Martin spark up and he wanted to know a bit more about it and what this place was like.
35:12
And so, I mean, there's another – I mean, it's Public Road now and it always was.
35:17
But, I mean, that looked like a fearsome special place.
35:22
Yeah.
35:22
It was a little before my time.
35:23
Was it?
35:24
Well, it was out of my price range.
35:26
Okay.
35:28
It occurred while I was still growing up.
35:30
Okay.
35:31
And I couldn't afford to travel.
35:32
So I never got to Longford for the race meeting.
35:35
But like Sir Jackie, I've been to the pub and I've seen the cars in the window and, you know, seen the signatures on the wall.
35:44
And I know the stories.
35:46
I know the terrible story of Lex Davison being killed.
35:49
at Sandown the week before, and his young protege, Rocky Tresas, begging Diana Davison to let him race in tribute to Lex the next weekend at Longford.
36:00
And crashing and killing himself.
36:03
So both members of Curie Australia dead in effectively two weeks.
36:08
Two weeks, yeah.
36:09
Or two Sundays in succession.
36:12
And taking out the photographer, Peter Dabbs, at the same time.
36:16
And the stories of Timmy Mayer,
36:18
being killed there as well, coming down the main straight, coming towards the pub, where there's still, to this day, a small plaque up recognising Timmy at the circuit, which kind of got into Bruce McLaren's head because Bruce was the team leader of the Coopers that Tim was driving at the time.
36:39
So there are some tragic stories there, which is why I think ultimately Longford had to go.
36:46
Yeah, yeah.
36:48
It's become a place of tradition for many of us now.
36:51
When we go to Simmons Plains, we always make a point of going to the Longford Pub.
36:56
Can I come to broadcasting?
36:58
So we've talked a bit about the journalism side.
37:02
You get a chance at Channel 9.
37:06
You need to join some dots for me here.
37:07
Firstly, I think there's a discussion with Sir Frank Packer.
37:10
So people would know James Packer now and Kerry was fearsome kind of thinking in his role.
37:18
But in the lineage, it's actually Sir Frank, isn't it?
37:22
So did you meet with him?
37:23
Were you perhaps wanting to go and cover the Vietnam War?
37:26
What happened there?
37:28
As a cadet, they really looked after you.
37:30
You were part of the family.
37:32
And occasionally, very occasionally, Sir Frank would call you to his office with his editor-in-chief, David McNichol, just to find out how you were going, just to discover what you were doing.
37:45
I mean, sometimes you'd walk in there and the first words would be, get your hair cut!
37:52
And Sir Frank was old school.
37:54
Yeah.
37:55
And after the London to Sydney Marathon as a reward, they said, what did I want to do next?
38:00
And I said, I'd love to have a crack at television.
38:02
He owned, curiously, a television station called Channel 9.
38:06
Nine, yeah.
38:08
And so they transferred me to Channel 9, which is how I got my start in television.
38:15
But there is a link here, I don't know in what order this unfolded, but was it around like a forerunner to a current affair or what were you working on there?
38:23
Well, I was a general reporter and doing some stuff that I really enjoyed.
38:30
I just loved the whole process of being able to write to vision and to be able to encapsulate in 90 seconds or less
38:40
an entire story.
38:41
Again, I was doing bank robberies.
38:44
But in those days we were working in film.
38:47
So it really taught you discipline because unlike tape, which is infinite, in every foot of film...
38:56
cost money.
38:57
Yes.
38:58
And so you had to be very economic in terms of how many feet of film.
39:02
You would have a 400-foot roll of film in the camera and if you didn't come back with 200 feet to spare, then you were deemed to have spent too much of Sir Frank's money.
39:12
Really?
39:12
Okay.
39:13
So I really enjoyed the process of doing news, which led me to doing...
39:19
Very early current affairs work, I was made the producer of a program called The Project Series, which was initiated by a guy called Robert Raymond.
39:28
I was the last producer, so I was the guy who killed it.
39:31
No, you weren't.
39:33
But it was evolving, and so The Project Series was going.
39:37
Mike Willis was coming along with things like A Current Affair, which was the next phase of long-body news journalism on television.
39:48
So I got to do that.
39:49
I also got to work with Ron Casey on World of Sport, which was the precursor to Wide World of Sport.
39:56
Sports, yeah.
39:56
Ron, people, I mean, for people that don't know, he went toe-to-toe with Normie Rowe on the Kerry and Kelly show.
40:07
I mean, I spent a little bit of time with him at 2GB.
40:13
So tell me a little bit about that.
40:15
It was called World of Sport or World of Sports, wasn't it?
40:17
Is that what it was?
40:18
It was called World of Sport and it was live to air every Sunday and,
40:22
and it was steam television.
40:24
It was make-up you'd go.
40:26
There'd be a Palako shirt under the counter and you would always give a guest on the show a Palako shirt or a pair of workman boots or something of that nature.
40:34
Yeah.
40:34
And then as they got up to leave, you'd take them back from them and put them back under a counter and hand them to the next person who was the guest.
40:41
No one ever got a gift, but they were commercial involvements.
40:46
Okay.
40:47
And I was...
40:49
hired by Ron, to represent Pucker Motorsport circuit racing.
40:55
And Mike Raymond was there to promote Speedway because he was the promoter of Speedway.
41:00
So naturally, he came to a commercial arrangement with Ron whereby Mike would represent Liverpool Speedway.
41:08
Gotcha.
41:10
So you two are kind of jousting about which is better or something, are you?
41:14
Oh, yeah, and Mike would...
41:15
Yeah, I was the kicking boy.
41:18
You know, Mike would always find a way of giving me a hard time and I was never smart enough to get back at him, although occasionally I did.
41:26
And it was great.
41:28
You'd go in there and you'd never know what was going to happen to you next.
41:31
It was really make it up as you go to television.
41:34
It was great fun.
41:35
And Casey encouraged you.
41:37
I don't know what the track was.
41:39
You can fill that aspect of it in.
41:42
You're basically on the grid.
41:44
Brock Moffat, maybe 60 seconds to go before race start or something or other, and the grid's being cleared.
41:53
You're encouraged to stick the microphone through the window, respectively, aren't you?
41:56
What happens here?
41:57
We were doing Orrin Park, and Channel 9 had the gig to do a series of Orrin Park races, and Casey took on the role of producer, so he was in McCann's in my year, and I was the boy reporter on the grid.
42:11
and I'm about to do great interviews prior to the start of the race.
42:16
There were no warm-up laps in those days.
42:17
I was straight into it.
42:19
And Casey, I was about to walk in and do it with about two minutes to go, and Casey said, no, no, hold back, hold back.
42:25
Until they put up the one-minute board, I want to get immediacy in this.
42:29
I've gone, but Casey, I'm supposed to clear the grid at one minute.
42:31
I'm supposed to be out of here.
42:32
He said, no, they'll do it for me because I'm doing television and they'll work to me.
42:37
And I've gone, righto, Ron, you're the boss because I can see myself losing my job the next day.
42:41
And at one minute to go, he said, now walk in on Brock and say, who's going to be first into the first corner?
42:46
A really incisive question, you know.
42:49
So I walk up to Brock and I, you know, because now I'm simply the oracle.
42:53
I'm no longer thinking for myself.
42:54
All I am is channeling Casey.
42:56
So I walk up to Brock and I say, Brock, who's going to be the first into the first corner?
43:00
And he looks at me and he says, and he's very polite, and he looks at me and he goes, but it's one minute to go.
43:07
Oh, I will be.
43:08
And I think, thanks, Peter, good luck.
43:11
And Casey then comes on, and there's 30 seconds to go, and Casey comes on and says, now go and ask Moffat.
43:17
You see, there's 30 seconds to go.
43:19
There's people trying to get me off the grid.
43:21
There's people rushing around.
43:22
And behind me, I can see all this flurry.
43:24
And I walk up to Moffat and I say, Moffat, who's going to be the first into the first corner?
43:29
And Moffat just looks up at me with that Moffat look on his face and goes, F off!
43:34
LAUGHTER
43:35
Straight into the microphone.
43:37
Casey never did that again because he had to answer to the Broadcasting Control Board the next day for the live to air comment.
43:45
I'll bet.
43:46
I'll bet.
43:47
I mean, now Motorsport Australia would be in a world of trouble doing something like that if you were not clearing the grid in time.
43:56
Can I come to people who've seen the movie Rush, maybe if they don't...
44:01
no Formula One history super closely.
44:03
We'll remember from that Ron Howard movie, the kind of pinnacle race where Nicky Lauda and James Hunt are battling for the world championship.
44:12
But what is illustrated in that is that Formula One was starting to become box office, that there was all these interests from broadcasters globally in this title fight between these two and so on.
44:23
And...
44:24
Am I right in saying it became a part of the first kind of real coverage in Australia?
44:29
You're a part of it.
44:31
Maybe Kevin Bartlett is a part of it.
44:33
Casey might have been there.
44:35
And Jack Brabham, is that true?
44:36
Yeah.
44:37
My understanding is it was the first internationally broadcast Formula One race live.
44:43
Amazing.
44:44
Which was incredible.
44:46
And Channel 9 came to an arrangement to take it live on a Sunday afternoon because the time difference between Japan and Australia was pretty advantageous.
44:56
Yeah.
44:57
So we all gathered in Channel 9's studio...
45:00
Jack, Sir Jack, Casey, KB and I sitting around the desk.
45:06
We were to intro and outro the race.
45:10
A footnote here.
45:11
I mean, massive rain and storms and all sorts, aren't there?
45:15
And there was the problem.
45:16
Up come the live pictures and all we're getting is whiteout.
45:19
from Mount Fuji.
45:23
And nothing was happening.
45:25
There was no movement at the station whatsoever.
45:28
And we're stuck there and we've gone live to air with an audience somewhere out there and we're talking to each other.
45:37
These were very early days of television.
45:39
No one had given any thought to what happens if it doesn't happen.
45:42
Oh, it comes to no standby material.
45:44
There was no standby material whatsoever.
45:46
And so we're talking to each other and we're trying to fill and we're trying to fill and we're trying to fill and we're just hoping that sooner or later the race will start.
45:53
Two hours later...
45:57
They've rushed up to tapes or actually the film library as well and they've pulled anything they can of motor racing that they've got in stock, which isn't much.
46:07
And so, unfortunately, one of the pieces of vision they found was the Roger Williamson death, the fiery death from Xanfor three years before.
46:18
And we must have replayed that five or six times in the two hours talking about motor racing safety and what have you.
46:25
But when we weren't doing that, the camera was just sort of sitting on Jack.
46:30
And you know Jack, he'd only use two words if one wouldn't do.
46:36
And I'm trying to interview Jack and KB is fresh to the television area so he doesn't really understand what to do.
46:44
And Casey's just given up.
46:46
It's on you.
46:47
It's on you.
46:48
So it's kind of... Yeah.
46:51
And...
46:51
Two hours later, I knew Jack Bravin's history down to what was his grandfather's grandfather's name, you know.
46:58
And then finally we went to air with the race.
47:01
But then, of course, we'd run out of time anyway.
47:05
So they held the race for a while and then cut to the news.
47:08
End of story.
47:09
Unbelievable.
47:10
Yeah.
47:44
That's the end of part one of my chat with broadcaster, journo, author and gun publicist John Smales.
47:51
The good news is we are not done yet.
47:53
When you're ready, there's a second instalment all set to go in our library.
47:57
From a star-struck Colin McRae wanting to meet Barry Sheen, putting a deal together for Murray Walker to co-drive Target Tasmania.
48:06
The moment he planted a seed with Lee Diffie at Le Mans,
48:10
and the brand new book called Full Tilt on Colin Bond.
48:14
All that and more here on Rusty's Garage.